


The Silver Wizard

by ausmac



Category: Original Work
Genre: Demons, F/M, Fantasy, Gen, Graphic Description, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 00:34:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9631838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ausmac/pseuds/ausmac
Summary: Trevally is a failed wizard who thinks that life has passed him by, until he finds himself caught up again in world events and starting a new life's journey he could never have imagined.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hoping to finish this work and make an ebook of it, but if not, I'd love to share something I've been working on for quite some time. Hopefully new parts will be posted regularly.

 

 _One shall rise like a flame in the night_  
_that lights the way for those_  
_who build a nation._  
_He is called the Bronze Wizard._

 _One shall rise from the shadows_  
_to aid the one_  
_who forges an Empire._  
_He is called the Silver Wizard._

 _One shall rise from an unexpected place_  
_when the light of Imperium wavers_  
_to spark a new fire._  
_He is called the Gold Wizard_  
  
_The Verses of Karmion_

He sat alone in the top room of his tower, watching the last sunset that would mean anything to him and considering that life, nature and the Gods never let a man out of his debts, no matter how long standing the obligation.  Certain bills had fallen due and there wasn't a lot of satisfaction in knowing that he'd brought it on himself.

There'd been a lot of dying going on around him for most of his life and it had lost its particular terror quite some years before when he'd been forced to acknowledge his mortality.  To die was acceptable - if not desireable - but to die in his mind, to feel the loss of self, that was a loss that chilled him.

He wondered how it would feel.  Would his memories fade like a song that, once finished, slipped away to forgetfulness?  His old man's mind was already growing dim from the natural course of his years, but there was enough of him to remember what he'd been and regret what he would become.  It wasn't as if he'd not been expecting it, but optimism was an old man's prop and hope died hard when it was all you had.

He considered potential and fulfillment, Destiny and happenstance, Fate and Blind Luck.  He'd known them all, experienced them all and had lived a fuller life than most people could hope for or expect.  A song from his childhood came out of nowhere, popping up like flotsam on the dying tide of his memory...

 _...time is given to few_  
_as it is given to you;_  
_to squander your days_  
_in spendthrift ways_  
_and waste them your whole life through..._

Had he been spendthrift?  Had he wasted his precious days?  Could he have changed anything to make it better?  Possibly.  Probably!  But for one who'd sunk very low, he'd also risen to very great heights.

One more night, then, for remembrance.....


	2. First Steps

The old man muttered to himself, belched, then bent over to peer under the table.

"You comin' out, Wizard?"

My voice echoed off the underside of the table.  "Not while you're still there.  Go home, Marve."

Marve scratched and wiggled in his chair and I could tell from the drops falling to the stained floor that he was guzzling his beer.  It wasn't very comfortable under the table, but I was drunk enough that it didn't really matter.

Marve's foot nudged at me as he grumbled again.  "Three tankards full I paid for, Trevally.  Least you could do is sit where a man can see you."

"Just because a person buys a person a beer or two doesn't mean he's free to bore the company.  And bein' drunk is no excuse for bein' a fool.  No excuse."

I heard Marve sucking his two remaining teeth as he tapped the tabletop in annoyance.  "Trevally," he whined again, "It's not a big thing I be askin' you for..."

It was no good hiding; he'd stay there till I came out.  I pulled myself up into my chair, grabbed a tankard, took a drink, and turned my bloodshot orbs on him.  "You still here?"

Marve scratched his skimpy beard and smiled, which made me take another drink.  "I'll pay ye."

"The answer two drinks ago was no.  The answer is still no, and it will be no two drinks from now.  Wait!"  I held up one finger as the old man started to whine.  "Won't do you any good, Marve.  I'm not some crone witch brewing in a big pot with eye of newt and wing of bat.  You want Mother Crisp to love you, then wash more often and be nice.  If I may repeat myself for at least the tenth time - I Don't Do Love Potions!"

It wasn't the first time Marve had made those kind of requests.  Some weeks earlier he'd wanted a pox put on his neighbour, Miller Scrove, who kept dumping his garbage into Marve's backyard.  Good cause for annoyance on Marve's part, I guess, but it was a bit much to want to give the man galloping body rot over a little rubbish.  Marve's sense of proportion was about as far along as his table manners, and having eaten at his house on a couple of occasions, I could attest to those.

But Marve was sixty-three years old with the intelligence of a retarded rabbit and the patience of a pack mule with a sore back.  He held the common uneducated belief that anyone with any magical talent could alter the laws of nature at whim.  I'd long since given up tryin' to explain to the residents of Stoneybrook that, first, talent is constrained and second, I wasn't that good a magicker anyhow.  To the minds of those solid country folk, a Wizard could do anything.  If he didn't, it was 'cause he didn't want to.

Finally Marve got the message, and hauled himself to his feet, his face pink with drunken anger.  "Feed a dirty..hiccup, 'scuse me...dirty scratch Wizard at my own table and...belch, pardon...gets no thanks for it.  Next times you gets a hunger, go eat with Scrove's pigs and maybe he won't be dumpin' his baggage..burp..garbage, that is, in my yard!"

Now, a man with a bit of magical talent might have been tempted to put the old codger's nose on the back of his head for that, but drunken laziness aside, I've never been a mean sort, and besides, I wasn't even sure I could.  I slumped back in my chair and watched him mumble and gurgle to himself as he wheezed his way out of the tavern and wondered if I maybe should have tried to pacify him.  At least he had food, which was something of a precious commodity in those parts.  Still, a man had to have some standards.  You know - pride.

It was a long time since I'd thought about pride.  In regard to m'self, anyhow.  When I was a young kid, bright and eager, I'd been very proud of myself.  Gods, I'd been ready to take on the world, to prove I was the greatest Wizard since Imallarion.  Thinking about lost dreams always made me want to drink and forget them again.  It hadn't helped in the past, but I've always had an overgrown sense of optimism.

A figure loomed over me and I looked up at the considerable bulk of the village blacksmith.  "Old Marve still mad at Scrove for throwing his starving chickens some food, then?" he asked with one of his low rumbling chuckles.

"Evening Smithy.  Pull out a chair and nail it together.  No, he's feeling a bit amorous about a certain widow and wanted me to smooth the way for him.  Even if I could, I wouldn't."  I downed the last of the beer in my mug.  "Nice woman, the Widow.  Could do a lot better than that miserly old nipcheat."

The smith's broad face crinkled into a smile.  "Your problem, Trevally, is you got principles.  Can be expensive things, principles.  Sometimes I wonder why you're hereabouts.  Why aren't you working for some rich man or Lord, an educated fella like you."  His eyes sparkled.  "Or shouldn't I ask?"

"You shouldn't.  But I'll forgive you if you refill this depressingly empty mug with some more of Jobe's awful beer."

 

One beer blended into another until the world fogged over pleasantly.  When Jobe finally threw me out it was the middle of the night.  There was I, Merrit Trevally, one-time student of the Majatner Academy, falling into a ditch, dead drunk.  I picked myself up and headed at a wavering wobble back up to the cave I called home, there to collapse into oblivion for another night.

I must have really been drunk, because I didn't hear Stoneybrook die.

When I stumbled out of the cave the next morning, with a nauseous belly and a thumping head, I thought at first that the devils lying in wait at the bottom of beer barrels had finally caught up with me.  Instead of thatched huts and barns the village was a black and grey burnt-out shell.  Smoke trailed upwards in the still morning air and the crows were already circling, their croaking the only sound in the dead, dirty smelling silence. 

I sat down with a thump and shook my head, which only made it worse.  Something like desperation helped me to remember one of the simple Words of Relief to drive away the sickness, at least  enough to stand.  I stood up, took a breath;  the smell of burning flesh reached me and that was enough to have me over the edge of the cliff bringing up anything I had left in my stomach.

When I was finally able to walk I made a cautious descent into the valley.

It was bleak.  The entire village was charcoaled rubble.  The Sickle and Hoe, where I'd spent a drunken hour trying to explain the facts of life to old Marve, was a faintly smouldering pile of ash.  Every house, every cottage, every building had been burnt.  Blackened lumps of people I'd known lay in the streets and in the burnt remains of their homes.  Nothing moved but the flies and the crows.  I'd seen some pretty horrible things in my time, but nothing matched the sight of that little twisted corpse of a town lying blackened under the summer sky.

I don't remember leaving, but when my interest in things came back I realised I'd left the village far behind.  The road was empty and I had no real idea of where to go so I just kept walking, putting one foot in front of the other.  I couldn't for the life of me think of anything else to do, anywhere to go.  And with no purpose, I unfortunately had time to think.

_You could have done something!_

The voice of my normally quiescent conscience pricked at me and something like a fist clenched in my middle, made all of guilt and anger and horror.  So maybe I wasn't the great Wizard I'd imagined when I was young.  But I knew enough to have done something, if I'd been in any state to help those poor innocent peasants.  I spent some time convincing myself that one failed Wizard couldn't have held off whatever it was that had toasted Stoneybrook.  I'd have died too, and for nothing.  But logic tastes flat when your mouth is full of ashes....

After walking aimlessly for hours I left the road to sit in the shade and try to think.  It was one of those warm, quiet summer days when the air is still and the crickets buzz to each other in the trees under an enormously blue sky.  Where to go, how to live...why to live, maybe.  How about just digging a hole and pulling the dirt in over my head!  Either I was getting too depressed or too sober.

If I'd believed in gods, I might have thought that they were watching me and planning to add a few extra curves to the spiral of my life, there and then.  The bushes behind me rustled and I turned to see a small dirty face appear amongst the greenery. 

He - for it was the face of young boy - studied me with all the intensity and apprehension of a small, frightened animal.  We looked at each other for a few moments, then the face disappeared and I heard a whisper of voices.  I was wondering whether I should check out the noise or just make a run for it when the face reappeared, joined by another.  They were children, a boy and a girl, older than littlees, young than adult, of that awkward, rushing-about and knocking-things-over sort of age.  The boy spoke.

"You're the Wizard Trevally, are ye not?"

"I am.  Are you from Stoneybrook?"

"Aye."  He had a child's body and features, but the eyes of someone who'd seen too much to stay a child.  "Me and Meisha is all that's left."  He stepped out from the bushes, and a girl joined him.  Two children, the survivors of a town, their faces black with soot and their night clothes torn and burnt.

All that was left of Stoneybrook.  They watched me in silence and my mouth was dry, suddenly, and clumsy.  Anything sympathetic I could have said would have sounded lame.

"Are you...well?  Not hurt, I mean?"

The sturdy boy, who looked a little familiar to me, shook his head.  "Nay, we're not hurt.  M’name’s Lucan.  Meisha was visitin' to see ma new donkey.  We hid in the trees.  Everything burnt down."  The eyes that watched me from that smudged face were hazel, tawny cat's eyes.  "In the morning everyone was dead.  We left then."

 That said it all, really.  I held out my hand.  "Lucan."

Lucan looked at it, then slowly reached out and took it in a brief grasp.  He took a breath and straightened, pushing his back straight and seeming to grow a couple of inches in the process.

 "I'm a good thinker and I have to look after us.  But I don't know where to go."  He looked at me, right in the eyes, and I knew what was coming.  "Can you take us with you?"

It might have been the guilty conscience, or maybe brain rot from over-indulgence, but I didn't come back with one of my snappy excuses to cut and run.  Before I could bite my traitorous tongue it had landed me up to my eyeballs in Responsibility, Self-Inflicted.

"Well, Lucan, sure you can.  I'm, umm, lost too, but maybe we can help each other out." 

Lucan glanced at the girl, who nodded.  "So where do we go?" Lucan asked.

"I guess we need to find a safe place to spend the night and hunt up some food."  I looked down the road, then over the empty grassland towards the mountains.  "Let's go there.  It looks sort of safe that way, I suppose."

Hel frowned.  "But you're a Wizard, don't you know?"

I sniffed and scratched my beard.  "I know frighteningly little.  All I do know is, it hasn't done me a lot of good lately.  For the while let's just forget about Wizards and magic, and concentrate on finding somewhere dry and warm.  Making it to tomorrow alive will be magic enough."

We left the road and set off through the forest in the direction of the nearest towering wall of the White Mountains.  That part of Lorrimor was mostly open farming land broken up by patches of wood, but the hills weren't too far away and the Mountains lay beyond them.  I had no real reason for heading that way -- at first it was just the need to put as much distance between me and Stoneybrook as I could.  But the mountains had always appealed to me with their distant, untouched serenity.

We walked through the afternoon and by the time it got dark we'd left the farming land behind and entered the forest that covered the foothills.  There wasn't much time to find any food but Lucan made a tiny smokeless fire and we all huddled around it, hungry and tired.

I looked across the fire at Lucan, finally nerving myself to talk about Stoneybrook.

"Did you see what it was that attacked the village?"

The boy shook his head, eyes big and dark.  "No.  We heard screamin’ and ran and hid down by the creek, in among the swamp ferns.  Didn’t see nuffin.”

“Hmn. Probably best you didn’t, since seeing could have meant being seen.  Did you go back and look?”

Lucan nodded.  "There weren’t much to see.”  He sniffed, wiped his nose on his sleeve.  “Our families were all dead.”

"And they killed all Miller Scrove's milk cows," Meisha said in a soft, sad voice.  "Even poor old Butterball, who couldn't run 'cause she was near twenty year old. "

Well, that justified my cowardice.  Anything that could wipe out an entire village down to the cows was beyond my skills to counter.  

I didn't think I'd sleep without nightmares, but before I knew it I was waking up stiff and bruised with a tribe of ants using me for a back road.  The kids woke well before me and went out hunting for food.  Meisha returned with a Silverback she'd tickled from a nearby stream and proudly presented it to Lucan for approval. She was a quite little thing, all red untidy hair and green eyes that seemed huge in a pale face.  She hardly said a word, but she watched everything.

Meisha cleaned and cooked the fish and we all shared in the catch.  Lucan had dug up some roots that went into the coals and together with the nuts and berries they'd managed to find we started the day with stomachs more full than when we'd gone to sleep.

We were still wandering the next day, planless and pointless, when we came across the ruins of a farmstead.  Unlike Stoneybrook, the farm hadn't been burnt; there were no bodies.  But someone had looted it, and done a thorough job of wrecking the place in the process.  We checked it out from the safety of the trees but when there was no sign of movement the kids sneaked in and reported back that no one was around.

I decided to get organised, so I gathered them around for instructions.  "Lucan, you check out the barn for anything useful like tools or equipment and see if you can find a tool shed or root cellar.  They might have overlooked stuff that would be useful to us.  Nothing too heavy though - we can't afford to lug junk around.  Meisha and I'll check out the house."  The boy nodded and headed off while Meisha and I pushed our way past the battered door into the house.

It had been a nice home once, before rats and human vermin had destroyed it.  Most of the useful items had either been stolen or wrecked but we did manage to find some bits and pieces, including some sacks, a couple of pairs of trousers and shoes.  The latter were especially valuable since the kids were barefoot.        

While we were packing our goods away into the sacks, Lucan returned with a surprise.  I heard a scuffling outside and went to the door to find Lucan leading a very thin, very old grey horse. 

It was the oldest thing I'd ever seen still walking around.  Its ribs showed through its skin, its hooves were splitting and the hairs on its grey muzzle dripped over its chin like an old man's beard.  Lucan looked very pleased with himself, while Meish dropped the sacks and scrambled over to pat the decrepit old nag.  I smelled trouble.

"Kids, that's a very old horse.  Even the people that robbed this house didn't bother with it, which tells you..."

"Wizard."  Lucan patted the old horse on its bent neck.  "I like this horse.  I'm calling him Snowbeard.   I  lost me donkey and I never had a horse and he's all alone and I want to take him with us.  If you don't mind."

Lucan, I was discovering, was nothing if not determined.  I looked across into the horse's eyes and it seemed to be waiting, too, for my decision.  Outvoted again!

"Alright.  But if it drops dead on top of you don't say I didn't warn you."

We stayed the rest of the day at the farm.  I managed to persuade the kids to wash; when they were more or less clean we fiddled around with the clothing we'd found and got them dressed into something better suited for travel.  The shoes were too big, of course, but with a little cutting and padding they served.  I even found a pair of trousers for myself, and a pair of worn but warm sheepskin boots.  We looked like beggars, but we were warm.

 

* * *

 

 

By the end of the fourth day we were climbing up through the foothills, passing the treeline and crossing the mossy, thinly grassed tundra of the lower mountains.  There weren't many trails, just some goat tracks, and we had to take it slow.  I still had no idea where I was going, I had some idea of getting across to Coldwind Downs I guess, and I thought there had to be a pass somewhere. 

The kids followed me unquestioning, with the innocent stupidity of children - they seemed to think I knew what I was doing.  Trust wasn't something I'd been given very often in my life, and it worried me from time to time.

I managed to get us quite thoroughly lost by the end of the first week and our food was rapidly running out.  We were climbing all the time into a landscape of desolation.  The nights were bone chilling, difficult to sleep through even after days of exhaustion.  The ground was rough and broken and I could see why we'd met no other travellers.  There wasn't even much grass for the poor old horse.

The worst thing for me was that the children were suffering, but carried on in a way that shamed me to silence.  The clothing we'd found wasn't enough to keep out the growing cold and I knew they were suffering in their oversizes shoes.  But they carried on uncomplaining, teaching me some lessons in courage.

We were making our way along a particularly rugged track when we cave to a valley.  It wasn't much of a place; stinking odours drifted through the rubble at its mouth and it seemed to exude unpleasantness.  I could see hot springs bubbling at one end, turning the dirt there into mush and the air stank of sulphur and dead things.  I felt the urge to leave as fast as I could and if it hadn't been for a sharp pebble in my boot...well, things would have turned out a lot different.

Tired and cold, I sat on a boulder, pulled my boot off and upended it.  Lucan stood beside me, staring into the valley, eyes narrowed.  As I rubbed my foot I looked up to see him frown.

"What?"

"I dunno.  This place feels funny."

"It stinks too."

"No, I mean it feels funny.  Strange.  Almost like its alive and wants us to go away."

I'd never taken much note of children's conversation in the past, but Lucan had begun to impress me as someone who rarely said stupid things.  I looked into the valley again.  We hadn't actually gone in, it hadn't seemed interesting enough for that.  I put my boot back on and walked over to the blocked entrance.  And stopped dead.  I took off my backpack, handed it to Lucan and told them to wait.

"I'm going inside to take a look."

They nodded and stood beside the horse and watched me go in silence.

As soon as I was inside the valley the sense of not being wanted increased dramatically, practically pushing me backwards.  What I'd sensed at the entrance became palpable, and anyone with any magic training would recognise it at once.  I hadn't spent all my time at Majatner getting drunk; I was enough of a wizard to recognise that the valley was protected by a very powerful Working.

That particular type of Working was called a Zoner.  I'd studied them at the Grange but I'd never experienced one big enough to cover such a large area.  The valley must have been five miles long and its walls went up five hundred feet in places.  Whoever had set it in place knew his or her stuff.

At that point a sensible man would have cut and run.  If a powerful wizard wanted this valley left alone, then common sense would suggest doing just that.  But I was tired and curious and - lets face it - I never had a lick of common sense.  It was an act of outrageous and fortuitous stupidity.

As I moved further inside the strength of the Working grew.  At one hundred paces from the entrance it took all my will just to put one foot in front of the other.  Gritting my teeth I kept pushing forward - and then, abruptly, it gave way and everything changed.

It was as if I'd fallen through an invisible wall.  Everything had been an illusion; in place of bad smells and naked rock was a garden.  There was lush grass that stretched the length of the valley, and trees grew around a stream that formed into a decent-sized lake.  What had seemed a plopping pool of mud was a bubbling hot spring, sand-based and crystal clear.  The air was warm and sweet and rich with the smell of flowers and warm growth under the sun.  It was so beautiful it made a man remember all the dreams he'd ever had.

I stood there for a while, soaking in warmth and feeling all the kinks and exhaustion drop away.  Finally I shrugged myself back to reality and began to look about.  Past the wood the ground opened up and flattened out at the base of the surrounding valley walls.  And it was there I saw the first signs of a human touch - a wide set of stone steps leading up to a broad entry way in the side of the mountain.

The stones of the hillside had been shaped into a form something like a great grey tower, a part of the mountain and yet not.  It couldn't be natural, and that being so, the owner of the valley cliff tower wasn't the sort to antagonise.  I made my way to the stairs and climbed up to the entrance way.  I stopped just inside the entry, quivering like a rabbit ready to bolt.  There was no sign of movement or light within, it was as dark as the bottom of a well at midnight.  I hesitated for a while but finally gave in to the inevitable - if I wanted to find out anything, I had to keep going.

It wasn't really all that dark, once my eyes got used to the gloom.   The tunnel did a sharp dogleg beyond the entrance and I called up a small light Working to see where I was going.  I was a bit rusty but managed to make a glow of about lantern strength which was enough to brighten the stone passageway around and ahead of me.

It was big.  The natural contours of the cave had been shaped and smoothed so that the walls glistened in the yellow light.  The floor was burnished and smooth and spaced here and there around the rock walls were dark patches of other passageways leading deeper into the mountain.  Shelves and tables, chairs and other pieces of furniture were scattered throughout the enormous room and everything was coated with spiderwebs and dust.  The floor was littered with blown leaves and dirt.  The air hung heavy and still.  My heart stopped jumping and I sighed with considerable relief.  Nothing bigger than a mouse had lived or moved in this room for a very long time.

As I turned to head back outside I caught sight of a banner hung high on one wall.  The light from my little Working sparkled on a bright patch of thread and I knew suddenly whose valley this had been.  The banner featured an old fashioned key embroidered in bronze thread on a black background.  That had been Imallarion's clansign.  The sign of the Bronze Wizard, who'd vanished five hundred years before.

I went back outside to fetch the children, leading them in through the Zoner, showing them how to resist the power.  They were amazed and delighted at the valley and began to explore.  Meisha ran and laughed like the child she was but had forgotten to be, since Stoneybrook.  Lucan didn't laugh - I'd never seen him laugh in all those days - but he watched his friend and seemed pleased.

I was just happy to sit in the grass with my boots off and the sun in my face, happy to know that we'd found a sanctuary.  We were home.

 


	3. Leaving the Valley

We spent five surprisingly placid years in the Valley.  But nothing, not even perfection, lasts forever.

One Autumn evening I was reading through a pile of scrolls by the fire in the main cave.  At the sound of a footfall I looked up to see Lucan coming towards me through the dying light. He folded himself into a chair with his usual grace, took a slender dagger from its sheath and began sharpening it with a honing stone.  The blade was already sharp enough to cut air but Lucan worked on it the way some women knit and some men whittle, to keep their hands busy while they think.  After a few quiet minutes he ran one finger along the edge of the blade, then put it away.  He leant back, the long single pale braid of hair dropping over the back of the chair, and looked across at me through the flames.

"It's time to go."

The years had given me some insight into the workings of Lucan's mind, so the brief sentence wasn't that hard to figure out.  He was telling me our days of serenity and security were coming to an end.  I'd been expecting it, but I still wasn't happy; I'd come to love Imallarion's valley and hated the idea of leaving it.

"Are you sure?"  But I already knew the answer.  Lucan wasn't an empty conversationalist; what he said, he meant.  "What about Meish?"

"We talked it through.  We've really been waiting for you."

Meisha wandered over to sit around the fire with us.  The ruddy glow of the fire flickered over her face in a rosy wash.  Time had finished what the destruction of Stoneybrook had begun.  They'd stepped from their childhood like old clothing, growing up unconcerned and free.

The years had turned Meisha into a striking young woman, with her green eyes, flecked golden complexion and her honey red hair tied in a two thick waist length braids.  The little girl was mostly gone and in her place was a young woman of some temper and intelligence, whose tongue could be as sharp as Lucan's blade.  Sometimes she said things that hurt but she wasn't a mean girl;  as she sat next to Lucan she put her hand on my arm and gave me a sympathetic grin.

"We know you like it here.  It's why we stayed this long."

That made me feel a bit ambivalent; pleased that they cared enough about how I felt to be concerned, but sad, too, that they didn't love the valley as much as me.  I tried to keep the whine out of my voice, without much success.  "I thought you liked it here.  You seemed to..."

Lucan nodded.  "We do, Trevally.  But we talked about it a lot."  He stopped and flushed.  "It’s comfortable and safe here, but we need to get back and find out what's happening outside.  To the rest of the world.  And maybe find out who or what killed our families.”

I groaned.  "Get serious, kids.  Even if we could figure out what happened, what makes you think we could do anything about it?”

Lucan's eyes were hooded, half hidden beneath the fringe of pale hair.  "But you can.  And we can help you.  Someone or something owes us its life, for Stoneybrook.  And who knows how many others..."

It was times like that I wished I had a beer.  "My young friend, what makes you think I could?

"Well, you have been doing a lot of reading for the past five years."  Meisha pointed at the stack of scrolls.  "You must have picked up something from all that."

I reached over, picked up one of the scrolls, and unrolled it.  "This," I said, tapping the old vellum sheet, "is a Transformation, a Major Working of Plant Growth.  Mainly used for farming communities, it helps the crops to grow healthy and big.  To use it you need to understand the nature and structure of plants, be able to understand and memorise thirty two lines of Working and control more power than an average lightning bolt. Just being able to read it doesn't mean a person is able to do it."

Meisha watched me, intent.  "But can you do it?"

I shrugged, tossing the scroll aside.  "I don't know. Maybe.  I don’t have a great record with Major Workings."

"Why?"

"Because...I just don't.  Let's drop the subject, alright?"  The truth was, the last time I'd tried, I'd failed.  And the time before that.  And quite a few times before that.  After being slapped in the face often enough, a man learns not to do whatever it is that earns the slap.

"It doesn't matter."  Lucan took his dagger out and studied it in the firelight.  "If they were living things, they can die."  He looked across at me, his cat's eyes shining as sharp as his dagger.  "Our families are dead, without even a burial for their bones.  But it isn't just revenge.  There's some of that, but it isn't just for hate."  He put the dagger away again and stretched back.  "The powers you taught us about, the one you showed me how to use -  if I believed in the Tor, I'd say they gave me this power to use.  It's not a healing power, after all."  He looked up at me, firelight or something making his eyes glow.  "Is it?"

I couldn't fight that one.  When I'd discovered he was a Worker of the Red Hand I'd nearly lost it.  But he'd needed to be taught, so the power didn't destroy him.  "No.  The Red Hand is an offensive power, meant to kill.  In some places in Lorrimor they'd try to hang you if they found you were a Red Hand.  It's to be touched by the Demons, they'd say, and you're a worker of evil."

Meisha scowled.  "He's not evil!"

"We know that, but frightened peasants don't.  It's a skill, a weapon, no more evil than a sword.  An act is evil, not a weapon."  I'd read them some of the legends and historical tales of Lassander, who'd founded Lorrimor five centuries before and was said to have been incapable of wrong and beloved of the Tor. And Lassander had wielded the Red Hand.  Theory was that it had, in fact, come from a demon originally, but Lassander had managed it and turned it to decent use.  A bad person with the Red Hand could be a very bad person indeed.  But Lucan wasn’t bad. Certainly dangerous, but I didn’t think he had an evil bone in his body.

I hoped not, anyhow.

We’d strayed from the point, but I knew why.  They were letting me argue myself around the fact until everything was sorted out.  I knew they wanted to go and I couldn't - and wouldn't -  stop them.  They were as free to choose their life paths as me, free to come or go as they wished.

Lucan stirred the logs in the fire with a booted foot.  "We want you to go with us."  His lips twitched in the closest thing to a smile Lucan had.  "Anyhow, we couldn't leave you here by yourself, Tor knows what you'd do.  Will you come?"

I grunted.  "I suppose I have to.  When?"

"Soon.  A day or two.  Meisha is making some arrowheads and I need to finish work on a saddle and bridle for Snowbeard.  Say two days."  He looked up quickly, eyes wide.  "Alright?"

I nodded and they said good night, leaving me to my thoughts.  I'd found I had an unexpected a talent for teaching  or maybe they had a talent for learning.  Knowing nothing about kids, it had been a learning experience for me as well.  But there had been so little of the baby about them and little need to coddle.  I'd given them affection, someone to talk to, an education of sorts and been there to answer any questions I could.  All in all I was pleased with the way they'd turned out.

After they'd gone I had to sense of being watched and turned to see a pair of eyes gleaming in the darkness.  There was the sound of hard hooves striking stone and Snowbeard moved into the firelight, long tail brushing the floor and his mane a silver fall over his enormous shoulders.  There was another success story, at least as far as the kids were concerned.  They thought I was a marvelous wizard when I'd managed to turn the poor old horse into a picture of equine perfection.

Of course, it had been an accident.  I'd found what looked like a Transformation that had something to do with rejuvenation and decided to test it.  But it was odd looking and I wasn't brave or stupid  enough to try it on myself first.  And Snowbeard had been handy.  It had worked superbly, awfully smooth for what I felt sure was a Major Working.  And I'd ended up with a young stallion that a King's stable wouldn't turn away.

However, the Working had come with a tail phrase that I'd seen too late.  The moment I finished, the tail phrase had activated and wiped the scroll clean.  I couldn't remember it, so it was gone forever.  I didn't bother to tell the kids the magic hadn't been deliberate.  No need to bother them with minor matters.

I looked up at the horse, saw him watching me through the flames and I swore I could see intelligence looking back at me from those big dark eyes.  He'd never been restricted, was allowed to go where he pleased and was as house clean as a cat. He came when called...sometimes.  He allowed himself to be ridden, sometimes.  And he often stood there on those enormous legs that still managed to be graceful and stared at me as if he was waiting for me to do or say something.  Or, maybe, as if he were about to say something himself...

I sat by the fire till its flame had dropped down to a glow in the coals with only Snowbeard for company.  One of the first things I'd found while exploring the caves was Imallarion's library, and I'd spent many hours reading through is enormous collection of books and scrolls.  The old man had been a real researcher; his library alone could make me a rich man if I felt like selling it to the High Grange.  But something told me that wasn't a good idea.  There were things in there best left alone.

Not that that had stopped me from a little personal experimentation.  When I'd told the kids I'd be trying out a few things Lucan had given me a twitch of the lips and a shrug. 

"Fine, Trevally.  Just give us plenty of warning.  Remember when you tried to open the Library door and got knocked down to your underpants by the Protector?  We'd just like to know first...so we can be at the other end of the valley.  In case the roof comes down or something."  Scurrilous, if wise.

There was one Working I hadn't tried, but it seemed like the time had come to think seriously about it.  If we were going out into the nasty, dangerous world, we'd need all the protection we could get.  And Imallarion had even provided a way of doing that. Up till then I'd thought the payment would be too high.  But perhaps not.

Taking the lantern, followed by the silent horse, I went down the passageway and into the library.

It was large, about half the size of the main cavern, and lined with shelves that bent under the weight of books and scrolls and other magical paraphernalia.  The air of the room was cool and clear and the room's own preservation Working kept it spotlessly clean.  The rock floor was covered by thick Meldoran carpets worth a king's ransom in themselves.  A massive desk stood in the centre of the room, littered with scrolls and open books, with a silver candelabra on one corner and a set of silver inkwells and pens on the other.  Whenever I entered that quite shadowed place I always had the feeling that Imallarion had just popped out for a cup of Cha and would be back any minute.  It made me feel a little closer to that long-dead greatest of all Wizards.

The Working I wanted was set in a special cylindrical holder hanging on the wall with a number of other powerful pieces.  I took the tube from the wall and tapped the rolled parchment onto the desk top.  I looked up at Snowbeard who was standing near the door, watching me.

"I've always wondered why Imallarion invented this Working.  I don't suppose he needed or used it himself, since the records don't make any mention of him losing his mind."  I ran one finger over the copperish ink at the top of the paper.  "Great Words of Remembrance.  Maybe he had somebody like me in mind when he created it.  Somebody who had nothing to lose and everything to gain.  Great Tor, I have to be crazy..."  My self-preservation instincts were kicking up and trying to tell me something.  "What's the saying...when wisdom is dangerous, its wiser to be ignorant.  Should I be wise and stay stupid, or be stupid and get smart?"

Snowbeard stamped one front foot and tossed his head in what look like a nod.  "Well, that's good enough for me.  After all, if I ask a horse for advice, I should be prepared to accept it, shouldn't I?"  I was just putting it off, I knew.  I opened the scroll and spread it out on the desktop, holding the corners down with books and paperweights.  I sat down, rested my elbows on the desk, and took a deep breath.

Workings are the poetry of power.  The good ones, the very best, mingle rhyme, meter and the sort of intellectual passion that scholars talk about when they discuss prose of merit.  This one was beautiful, scribed on a sheet of fine handpressed linen paper, the edges painted with gold to preserve it against dust.  The hand was calligraphic, as all good written Workings were, the language of magic as art.  And the letters themselves seemed to have a phosphorescence, like frozen lightning. I couldn't remember seeing so perfect a piece.

"Well horse," I said, looking up at the bright watching eyes, "wish me luck.  Now is not the time to fumble."  I had a very nasty idea that if I blew this one, I'd end up with porridge for brains.  I stood, took a deep breath, made the opening gesture and said the trigger phrase to gain the necessary level of awareness.  I hadn't lost that, it seemed; my mind slipped into the awareness level as smoothly as silk.  The power gathered and I felt it swell in my mind; I spoke the Working with deliberate care, then closed my eyes and released it.

For a moment or two I thought it wasn't going to work. There was hesitation in the power flow, as if something had stopped it.  In the past, so many failed efforts at doing Workings had reached this point, and I’d not managed to get any further.  But I pushed that time, ignoring the warnings, shoving against the hesitation.  Fact was, I was tired of failing and fear of it and the worst possible outcome, just wasn't enough anymore to stop me.  Then there was a sense of tremendous pressure inside my head, like a blacksmith's bellows being overfilled.  I thought I was going to die, that my head would simple fly apart all over the room...then something snapped and the pressure was gone.

When my head stopped pounding I grabbed the nearest Working and read through it.  Then I put it down.  It was a long spell and for a moment I felt the old familiar doubt; then it came to me, as if I'd turned a page in my mind.  Every word, every gesture, was completely retained.

I didn't sleep well that night; I spent hours telling myself that it didn't matter, that I hadn't expected to reach middle age, much less eighty.  It was a long way off and I'd probably die in some back alley somewhere long before then.  It's the quality of life that counts, right?

It just felt odd knowing that, no matter how long I lived, came my eightieth birthday, my mind would switch off like a light.   Imallarion had demanded a price for perfection: the Great Words of Remembrance allowed a wizard to perfectly and accurately remember every Working he would ever read.  And on the eightieth anniversary of his birth he'd forget everything.  Everything.

For the following three days and nights, I crammed.  I read every spell and book in that vast library, consuming them until I was too tired to read anymore and I fell asleep over the scrolls.  Then I'd wake, have a hot cup of cha and swallow down some food, and continue.  And every Working, from Minor to Major to Great, I remembered, perfectly.  It was as if I'd learned to breathe again, after suffocating for years.

Three days later, with food and supplies tied over Snowbeard's rump, we set out from the valley and headed down out of the White Mountains.

 

* * *

 

The travelers who came down out of the White Mountains that late Fallmonth were very different from those that had gone up five years before.  We'd been lost then, and hopeless, real dragonfood.  But five years of good living and exercise had done us - at least some of us - a lot of good.

Except me, of course.  After the perpetual warmth and peace of the Valley, the cooler unpredictability of a natural climate came as a shock to my system, and I came down with a cold.  For some reason, colds have a powerful resistance to healing Workings; any wizard who can come up with a successful Working against colds will be a wealthy man or woman.  I certainly didn't have a cure, and for a few days I made life miserable for the others, on the principle that if I was that way, they should be too.

Then it started to rain, and I was a miserable wet wizard with a cold.  I mustn't have been very good company and finally, after putting up with my sneezing, groaning and complaining for a couple of days the kids decided to get me under cover before I gave it to the rest of them.  Awfully considerate of the children, really.

We camped off the road in a small wood and I spent most of the night coughing.  Next morning Meisha went off into the trees and came back with a bag full of vegetation, which she worked on for a time near the fire.  I'd dressed myself and was sitting wrapped in a blanket, a sniffing, gooey bundle of misery, when Meisha sat beside me and waved a mug under my nose.

“Drink this."

I looked down at the cup and sniffed.  Not that I had an active sense of smell, but I could still imagine.  It looked awful.

"What is it, poison?"

"It’s a steeping of Maidenface, Lungease, Ballberry juice and some other herbs to ease your cough.  Drink it."

I was feeling pugnacious.  "Na.  It'll make me throw up."

She sighed.  "Trevally, you're impossible.  Would it help if I mentioned it’s got some warmed wine in it?"

The word "wine" diverted me.  "Where'd you get wine from?"

She jiggled the cup impatiently.  "From that merchant we passed yesterday.  Now, are you going to drink this or do I have Lucan hold you down while I force it down your neck?"

She'd do it, too.  "Princess, that’s no way to talk to a sick man," I muttered, taking the cup from her.  "I'll probably have a reaction and die." Pitiless, Meish just sat back on her heels and glared.

"Drink!"

"Alright, alright, I'm drinking!"  I closed my eyes, screwed up my face and swallowed it down in one gulp.  I'd been right the first time  it was awful.  My outraged stomach gave serious thought to chucking it back up again, but I managed to keep it down and  miracles!  within a couple of hours I was feeling noticeably better.  Meish, I was discovering, could work a different sort of magic to my own.  And it was a lot more reliable.

We met a well protected merchant caravan about noon that day.  He gave us directions to the nearest village, which turned out to be about five miles along the road to the south.  We'd travelled almost that far when we began hearing a lot of noise, and saw smoke rising above the trees.  The village was obscured by the woods and when we left the road to investigate it was pretty obvious what the trouble was.  We could soon hear shouting, horses screaming and the general cacophony of battle.

My head cold slipped into insignificance as I slid off Snowbeard's back and drew the kids around me for a council.

"Now let's see what's happening before we make any mad moves."  I gave Lucan a hard look.  "Especially you.  I know you want to try your skills real bad, but a fool rushes in before checking things out."

Lucan gave me a sort of halfhearted nod.  He was the one I was worried about most, of course.  He had a coldly excited look and I knew he was itching to try his sword and powers in something other than practice with a straw dummy, bloodthirsty little devil.  Meisha began stringing her bow, so I knew neither of them would be content to be an audience.  With a sigh I crept forward and the kids fanned out on either side, their brown and tan buckskins blending in with the undergrowth.  My own green velvet robe, taken from Imallarion's closet, didn't stand out too much either, thankfully.

We crept forward quietly to the edge of the woods and, hidden behind a scrub growth, we checked out the situation.  The village, larger than Stoneybrook had been, had built itself a sort of large fence of tree trunks.  The raiders, about ten of them, were using the obvious technique for attacking a wooden wall - they'd set fire to it.  A large section of the fence was blackened and smoldering, and the villagers were still throwing pales of water onto the edges.  As we lay down to watch we saw a raider gallop up and throw a pottery jar at the crumbling section, and as soon as he was clear the other raiders sent fire arrows onto the oiled wood, setting it alight again.

They were certainly an ugly bunch, which seems to be a trait of the trade, since I've never seen a beautiful one.  They were well mounted though; they obviously stole only the best.  However, their leader wasn't very smart, because the attacks were uncoordinated and unhurried.  They probably thought they didn't need to expend a lot of brain juice on a small farming village; the fence was just a morning's workout before they got down to the real business of house burning, raping, pillaging and putting-to-the-sword.

I looked across at Meisha, who'd set herself up behind a tree with half a dozen arrows poked into the ground beside her.  "Rapid fire a few for me, will you Meish.  And try not to miss."

She gave me a quick grin before pulling back on the first arrow, sighting briefly and letting it fly.  A second followed it a moment later and then another, till all six had gone. The first took a raider through the throat, the second hit one square in the back and so on.  Five men were down before they even knew they were under attack.  One arrow missed and Meisha gave an unhappy grunt as she collected another from her quiver.

I felt a ripple of psionic power and saw Lucan narrow his eyes and grit his teeth.  There was a terrible cold flash of something that had every hair on my body standing upright, and the leader of the raiders screamed.  He clutched his head and, still screaming, fell from his horse.  He convulsed on the ground for a few seconds, then gave a terrible howl and collapsed into a very dead corpse. 

Lucan turned towards me and I saw his face was white and the fire was fading from his eyes to be replaced by something very young and very shocked.  "I...I felt him die."  He swallowed and wiped his mouth.  "He deserved to die, but the sword is cleaner. I understand what you mean now." 

I'd told him, when I'd found he had that terrible talent, that its use was like a bad drug.  It gave the user a terrible power, but exacted an equally dreadful price.  But he hadn't understood, till then.  Having felt the backlash and the pain, he was less likely to use it on whim, to the point where it would end up sending him mad.

Before I could say anything he was on his feet, drawing his sword and leaping onto Snowbeard's back.  Lucan charged out of the woods before I could even think of doing anything to stop him.

"Damn!"  I swore a few common expletives.  If he’d given me some time I could have hit the rest of the raiders with a Working but anything I threw at the raiders then would catch Lucan as well.  Meisha grinned at my annoyance as shrugged. I showed her my teeth in a gritted, artificial grin.

"You still here?  I'm surprised you aren't out there with him."

"I will be, if you are.  I'm looking after you."  Of course.  Anyone over thirty was ancient; have to keep the old fella out of trouble.  Hitching up my robe, I jumped across the fallen logs at the wood's edge and headed for the fight, with Meisha beside me, her longbow clutched in one hand, her dagger in the other.  One raider saw us and pulled his horse around to run us down.  A quick Word of Control sent his horse into a frenzied bucking; he hit the ground and Meisha disposed of him with a well-placed dagger thrust.  Another rider had dismounted to take her out from behind and I flipped my dagger over to its point and threw it.  My old tavern fighting days had taught me a few tricks which I was pleased to see hadn't deserted me.  The dagger buried itself point first in the raider's chest.  He looked down at it, astonished, and while he was distracted Meisha finished him with an arrow to the head.

It didn't take very long after that.  Though I was sort of busy myself, I did catch sight of the kids from time to time, and could see they were able to take care of themselves.  Lucan rode into the thick of the raiders, laying about with his sword and cutting them down with impressive ease, his young pale face devoid of expression.  Even Snowbeard did his bit, kicking the legs out from under the smaller horse and treading on the heads of a couple of wounded raiders.  A few minutes after breaking cover we were left standing in a flattened field of grain with messy bodies lying around us.

I did a quick check on the kids. Lucan had a nick on his check and I hit him with a little healing Word that closed the wound before it could become infected.  Meisha was untouched and had barely raised a sweat.  Five years of daily workouts and weaponry practice had made them very fit.  We were looking at each other in tired relief when the stockade gate opened and a noisy crowd of villagers erupted out.  They took out their own fear and anger by making sure all the raiders were thoroughly dead, then the village Headman stepped forward and gave us a jerky bow.

"On behalf of the people of Dendraven, I thank you.  I cannot say how grateful we are for your help.  You have done us a great service."  He wave a hand towards the open gateway.  “Please enter, and be welcomed.”

"Thanks.  By the way, good fellow," I said as I followed him inside, "do you have anyone in your town who's good with colds?"


End file.
